A new kind of cosmic flash may reveal something never seen before: the birth of a black hole. When a massive star exhausts its fuel, it collapses under its own gravity and produces a black hole, an object so dense that not even light can escape its gravitational grip. According to a new [continue reading]

ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope has helped to identify a star and a black hole that orbit each other at the dizzying rate of once every 2.4 hours, smashing the previous record by nearly an hour. Black hole-star pair orbiting at dizzying speed. Image Credit: ESA The black hole in this compact pairing, known as [continue reading]